Sector 63 Issue Revisited - Here is a Prime Example of Acronis Support
How about it Yana? You lead everyone to believe that the updated files for article 1514 and build 8398 would be posted shortly after the programmer returned from vacation mid January. Did he ever come back? LOL
Here's what I've been forced to do as a workaround for my clients who change external USB drives weekly. This nasty error prevents the ATIW backup from running, which prevents my Pre- and Post-scripts from running, which means that the situation can persist for DAYS without detection...during which we have no backups.
I've had to write a script (on XP) and run it as a scheduled task at 2:15 am every day; if the computer is still on, it means the Post-script never ran (which shuts down the computer, usually before midnight). So, if the computer's still on at 2?15 am, it means ATIW failed after a USB drive change. The scheduled task shuts down the computer. The computer is set to autoboot at 7:00 am every morning, and after that backups run fine, because the reboot causes the USB drive to be recognized, so ATIW will run.
What a crummy hack I have to create just to get around the problems Acronis creates.
Like Jim, I'm getting frustrated and angry at Acronis, who refuse to recognize this is a real problem, are (apparently) doing nothing to fix it, and steadfast in refusing to keep us informed on progress (if any). All we can assume is the Acronis doesn't care.
Well, I've loved Acronis products and I have depended on them for a very long time. They haven't let me down when they work.
I have been forced to move on with my sudden lock / reboot issue..
I'm using MS Backup for the daily image, and I've set up a task in the Task Scheduler that has several batch files associated with it than runs overnight to a 2nd USB HD.
One batch file shuts down services, one performs an xcopy and another restarts the services and the task scheduler sends out an email.
I can't afford to have another reboot of this production server. I will have to stay with this until there is progress made or another release of TI Echo Server.
The closest I got to fixing the issue was the registry "adjustment" in one of the earlier posts.
Thanks for all the suggestions on this thread. I will keep looking for the next release.
I have kind of faded in to the sunset Carol. I still check in to this forum once in a while and am just absolutely mind blown at the problems and lack of support/knowledge on Acronis's part. I am just shell shocked. I use to jump them daily but have given up. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results :) Brick walls ...
We have somewhat different problems but reading your above senario struck a bell. I have one customer that for some reason has problems recognizing external usb hard drives (kind of). It will never be recognized after initially swapping it out. I suppose a reboot would work but it is a server and rebooting it every time they swap drives would be out of the question. What I did find was that if I swapped out the drive, let it sit for 10 seconds, un-plug and re-plug it recognizes the drive. It isn't a fix but I have instructed the user to do just that. Swap it out, let it sit for 10 seconds then un-plug it and plug it back in. It is a cop out but probably the lesser of all evils.
I agree with you James. As a rule when it works it works great. It has saved my rear on more than one occassion. By Acronis's own admission the Echo Series doesn't handle external USB anyting well but that is the only real flaw with it and the work arounds seem to work pretty well. I suggested to them that they might want to continue development of the Echo series and address the last real flaw with it (USB devives). It would at least give users something somewhat reliable to fall back on while this disaster BR10 series gets addressed. They said they considered it and decided against it.
I somehow think that might be another major mistake in their thought process but what to I know. I am just a lowley little user and far be it for users to to know what they want :)
I am taking the stance that I will not move forward with BR10 for a good solid year. My opinion is that it will take them at LEAST that long to get it anywhere near stable and functional. The Echo series seems to work well with both 2008 Server and Windows 7.
I fgure in a year one of two things will have happened. 1) Acronis have fixed their product and their support or 2) They will be out of business.
If I were a betting man I would bet on #2...
James I am curious ... #2 is running Raid 5 with Intel Matrix Storage? To me that would imply on-board raid. Have you ever considered slipping in a little Adaptec Raid 5 controller? My servers are a mix. Promise Raid 1 or Adaptec Raid 5. I have yet to BSOD on a backup on any of them (the one thing I haven't encountered LOL). It wouldn't cost much and you would lose the "fake raid". Just a thought...
The Intel Storage Matrix Manager is a software utility overlay that controls the server's built in hardware RAID solution developed by intel. These particular servers run the ICH10R southbridge that handles the RAID. That has been a solid solution for me and I have Acronis running on several of these with no issues.
The "Matrix Manager" is just a software overlay that allows alot of control for rebuilds and consistancy checks, etc. from within the OS and while the OS is running (without user and production interuption).
I like the solution because the entire system is tightly integrated and very compatible.
Thanks for the suggestion however.
Hello all!
Thank you for your comments and feedback, really appreciate that.
We are sorry for not notifying you regarding the update of the 1514 article - we couldn't get a reply from the developers for a long time. We were promised to have this article updated in January, and actually all is ready except new modules for Acronis True Image Echo Workstation - I was reported that there are some issues occurred with building it. Nevertheless, without it we cannot update the article, but we will be glad to provide you with the fix via PM.
As far as I understood, Jim and Carol, you need the fix for Acronis True Image Echo Server for Windows. Please kindly contact me via PM, I will immediately provide you with the newer modules. We've been testing them for a long time, and the issue wasn't reproduced, so we do not expect any problems with it.
Carol, I entirely understand your concern, and be sure that I share it. The patches we provide is not a solution, but a workaround. But in order to explain it I need to start from the beginning and provide you with the detailed explanation I got from testers and developers:
When the product starts the process of the backup, SnapAPI analyzes partitions and sends the information to another module fdisk1, which, by design, doesn't work with the drives without MBR, thus it is actually not a bug, but a limitation. As soon as it receives the information about the partitions, it checks the drive, finds that there is not MBR and errors out.
That's why in order to fix it we ask to
- check the drive with chkdsk command - this ensures us that the drive is really not corrupted and MBR - if any - is safe
- update modules from the 1514 - these demons is a workaround that allows to overcome the error
- update SnapAPI - this ensures us that SnapAPI is safe and not assigning incorrect flags to the drives (that confuses fdisk1 a lot)
This issue is fixed in Acronis Backup and Recovery due to it uses fdisk2 which works with drives without MBR.
We are not asking you to upgrade since this issue never occurred in Acronis Backup and Recovery, which is more, in case you are experiencing technical issue we cannot resolve - we are able to provide you with free upgrade as a solution. So no one is wanting more money from you - we want to provide you with a fix and doing everything, that depends on us to speed up this process.
Also in case you have/had on the moment of release valid support agreement or purchased Echo in 30 days before the release of Backup and Recovery version we will definitely provide you with the free updrade.
Jim, nice to know you remember my name, really pleasant. From you previous posts it looks like the issue got fixed for several machine, so I just would like to specify whether it still persists - I would like to provide you with a fix.
James, thank you for reporting about the issue. Unfortunately I couldn't find any case that's in progress regarding your contenuous reboots, and I would like to assist you with this issue. I'm positive we are able to successfully investigate this problem and resolve it, so could you please kindly, if still possible, provide me via PM with the following information?
- Acronis Info from the machine in question
- Windows Mini-Dump from the machine in question
- Exact sequence of actions that lead to the problem you report, so that we can reproduce it?
Dear users, please kindly contact me or Ilya via PM with specifying the version of the product you are using so that we could provide you with the solution while we are waiting for the article to get updated.
From my end I'm going to contact developers and experts team for more details and timeframes for solving the issue and updating the article. I will keep you posted.
Please let me know in case something seems confusing - I will be glad to clarify.
Thank you!
Hello all!
Good news, community!
I have contacted our Development and KB article teams and - we finally got it updated! Feel free to download and change the modules directly from the #1514 Kb article.
I would also appreciate if you could kindly keep us posted and report about any glitch or issue, so that we could provide you with the further assistance if needed!
Thank you!
Thank you for your diligence and persistence, Yana. (One correction: My issue is with ATI Workstation Echo v9.7.8398; I don't use ATI on servers).
These are my notes on the updates for three major components of Acronis TrueImage Workstation Echo v9.7.8398. These updates were released on Feb. 18, 2010 at http://kb.acronis.com/content/1514
While the TrueImage*.exe filenames and version numbers for the KB article are identical to those distributed with the last release (v9.7.0.8398), they can be differentiated by file size and date:
Build 8398 Distribution From KB Article 1514 (Feb. 18, 2010)
===================== ====================
TrueImage.exe 14,034 KB 11/5/2009 14,028 KB 1/19/2010
TrueImageService.exe 8,516 KB 11/5/2009 8,511 KB 1/19/2010
SNAPapi.dll, however, appears to be a reversion to an older version:
Build 8398 Distribution From KB Article 1514 (Feb. 18, 2010)
============================== ===============================
snapapi.dll v3.6.0.446 202 KB 6/19/2009 v3.1.0.329 226 KB 2/15/2007
INSTALL LOCATIONS
TrueImage.exe %ProgramFiles%\<user-specified path>
TrueImageService.exe %ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Acronis\TrueImage\)
shapapi.dll %WinDir%\system32
I had previously reported that a "Changed USB Drive shown as 'None'" on Wed, 2010-02-10 06:18 in this thread (http://forum.acronis.com/forum/7026).
I was pleased to see this new update made available, so I downloaded the file (above) and conducted the following test:
1. Confirmed that "Drive #2" is recognized by ATIW
2. Unplugged "Drive #2" and plugged in "Drive #3"
3. Confirmed that "Drive #3" is not recognized (shows as "None") by ATIW.
4. Swapped back to original "Drive #2".
5. Rebooted
6. Replaced TrueImage.exe with new edition from KB 1514.
7. Unplugged "Drive #2" and plugged in "Drive #3"
8. Confirmed that "Drive #3 is properly recognized by ATIW>
It appears to work!
I will now go to a client's site and make the same change, and check logs in a few days to make sure everything is working as expected.
(Because I used fixed-pitch text in tables, you may find this more readable by printing it out.)
Dear Carol!
Thank you for your detailed and kind reply!
I'm glad to hear that our solution works for you right now, and would appreciate if you could kindly update us after performing the same actions on customers' side, so that we could be sure that you are all set and the problem doesn't reoccur!
Thank you for your cooperation, patience and understanding!
Hi Yana. Thanks for keeping on top of this. I have used the older trueimage.exe and trueimageservice.exe from article 1514 with build 8398 and it resolves the issue. It is nice to know the newer files are out there and I will download and implement them the next time this Sector 63 error arises. I'll keep you posted...
Success!
Yesterday, I applied the replacement TrueImage.exe to a client's system, and today, the backup from last night was EXACTLY as I expected. So, good progress.
The "real" test will come on Tuesday morning, because staff will change the external USB drive on Monday, and ATIW will run on Monday night. If Monday's backup is correct and complete when I inspect it on Tuesday morning, then I will call this problem solved.
Stay tuned for the next installment of this saga :-)
Dear Carol and Jim,
Thank you for keeping us updated!
Carol, thank you very much for reporting that the issue is fixed, but I would anyway suggest you to wait to check whether it is working for sure. And though we do not expect any issues with it, it is always better to stay ensured against any risks!
So - we are waiting for news from you! Should you have any concerns - feel free to share them with us!
Thank you!
STILL FAILS!
I went into the client's office this morning and found the backup stalled with the same damned message! I clicked on "[Ignore All]" and it made a complete backup.
All the client did, yesterday, was take out the USB drive and replace it with another, identical model.
Knowing now that changing TrueImage.exe to the one in KB Article 1514 does not fix the problem on this computer, I have now changed TrueImageService.exe to see if anything is different NEXT Tuesday morning.
Reminder: This is about Acronis TrueImage Workstation Echo v9.7.8398 on a Dell Optiplex GX620 and Windows XP (SP3) with all updates to-date.
STILL FAILS!
On my own computer, where I make backups ever day, I swapped one of the three regular, idential 500GB external USB drives, and last night's daily backup didn't get made for the same reason I reported above, on February 23rd.
I'll try "TrueImageService.exe" as I promised to do, in the client's computer, too, but I have little hope this problem will ever be fixed.
BTW, The problem occurs on an ATI Workstation V9.7.8398, and only for LOCAL images made. When images are made from other ocmputers, and then copied (using xcopy) to this computer's external USB drive, it works flawlessly. In other words, there's nothing wrong with the USB capability; it's strictly in that initial (and unnecessary) scan of all drives, even those that won't be used as sources for the backup.
Specifically, I backup partititions C & D to partition X (all on the same hard drive), then copy the new image backup from X to N, the external drive. The failure occurs when, at the start of the backup after the drive at N has been changed (and changed hours before the backup beings), ATIW scans all drives (even N, which neither source nor destination for ATIW input or output). Once I manually click on [Igrnore All], the backup proceeds flawlessly.
This bug remains in ATIW. I would hope Acronis would fix it, or provide us a free upgrade to ABR, which does not exhibit the problem.
Hi at all, I also was a fan of acronis. I got the problem with sector 63 one month ago and I´m also still searching for a solution. I tryed the solutions posted in this forum. I´ve some installations of the Acronis TI SBS on Small Business Server 2003 32 Bit running and it works great for about 2 years. Then the error occoured at two customers. In both cases I´m using 5 external WD Harddisks 2,5". The customers are changing the disk´s every day. I also don´t want to restart the server every day. So I tryed to delete the partition on the external disk, made a new one not at the whole possible space and then format the disk. After this, it works for this day only. For a dirty solution I´m thinking about to script this steps. But it´s not a clean way. I´m also thinking, that Acronis should find a solution as fast as possible.
I have a customer running Acronis True Image Echo Workstation build 8353 using Seagate Free Agent USB drives for backup. The system has mirrored drives and MS SQL Express 2005. Recently the drives went out of alignment several pieces of hardware were replaced.
Prior to the drives going offline the end user reported several times that after the backup the system would go into a looped loop. I of course could not understand what she was talking about until I went on-site to return the system.
After the backup has completed she will go back into the system to work and then shut down the backup gives an error and the end user must end task on it several times like it is still operating in the background. I called Acronis and they suggested upgrading. I am a little nervous after reading the problems in this forum.
The odd thing is while we were troubleshooting the problems with the system we gave her a low end system - one drive and half the memory - and she never had any problems. When I gave her back the original system she noted the same problem. I had a a restore from the Acronis rebooted several times and never had the problem.
Does anyone have a suggestion for the upgrade. It appears from these formums there is more problems with the upgrade? What is a good stratgey for installation and configuration?
I appreciate your help. I cannot afford to have more problems with this client.
Thank you,
Bonnie
I have a customer running Acronis True Image Echo Workstation build 8353 using Seagate Free Agent USB drives for backup. The system has mirrored drives and MS SQL Express 2005. Recently the drives went out of alignment several pieces of hardware were replaced.
Prior to the drives going offline the end user reported several times that after the backup the system would go into a looped loop. I of course could not understand what she was talking about until I went on-site to return the system.
After the backup has completed she will go back into the system to work and then shut down the backup gives an error and the end user must end task on it several times like it is still operating in the background. I called Acronis and they suggested upgrading. I am a little nervous after reading the problems in this forum.
The odd thing is while we were troubleshooting the problems with the system we gave her a low end system - one drive and half the memory - and she never had any problems. When I gave her back the original system she noted the same problem. I had a a restore from the Acronis rebooted several times and never had the problem.
Does anyone have a suggestion for the upgrade. It appears from these formums there is more problems with the upgrade? What is a good stratgey for installation and configuration?
I appreciate your help. I cannot afford to have more problems with this client.
Thank you,
Bonnie
I had previously reported that a "Changed USB Drive shown as 'None'" on Wed, 2010-02-10 06:18 in this thread (http://forum.acronis.com/forum/7026).
I changed an external USB drive today, and noticed (even with the latest updates at reported in http://kb.acronis.com/content/1514) and checked that the external drive is shown (i.e., unrecognized) as "None".
My workaround HAS been to reboot the system. Today, I navigrated to Administrative Tools | Services, and stopped and restarted the "Acronis Scheduler2 Service" and then checked again: The drive is properly recognized. So, the problem is within that service, or one or more dependent components.
I have new theory on the "Sector 63" error, and showing "None" for the label on an external USB Drive that has just been plugged in, and I ask that some of the rest of you test it.
Look in "Services" for the "Logical Disk Manager Administrative Service" and see that the "Startup type" is "Automatic," and the "Service status" is "Started."
On the very computers I was having troubles on, this service is set to "Manual" and wasn't started. I changed it, as above, and now drives are immediately recognized.
Can you all test it and confirm that this is the source of the problem, if you have been unable to use an external USB drive with ATI? (The symptom is that it fails with the dreaded "Sector 63" error, preventing any further progress.)
If, in fact, this is the source of the error, then I recommend that Acronis properly diagnose the situation in their code:
1. If the "Sector 63" error is detected, then
2. First see if the dmadmin.exe service is running; if not, then; if so, start it and restart the "drive scan."
3. Try to start it, and rescan the drives; if not, the report the error as the failure of the Service dmadmin.exe not starting Automatically.
Really feel for you guys & the problems you are having with Acronis. I was a strong advocate of Acronis, until I started having random unexplained error messages and unexplainable disk errors. The final straw was when we installed Version 10 at a customer and NOTHING worked. It would not remember credetials on shared drives. It would leave orphaned files on the destination & fill it up. In a word Chaos! In the end we had to pull the software, as the support in the UK was uncontactable on several occations & when we finally got support it was from india & we had difficulty explaining the problem to the operative.
Since then we have been using a imaging product called "Shadowprotect"
What a difference!! We have this product installed on a dozen sites & guess what? Not a single issue at any of them. No stuck schedules, disk errors, crap error messages that don't mean anything. Beautiful. Plus. it's cheaper than Acronis & the company are a delight to interact with. The support is proper support & doesn't just suggest you try the latest build/version in response to any query you post.
No I don't work for them by the way, just thought this might be useful for some of you that are having issues.
Good luck
Paul.
Dear Mr. Webb:
Isn't it curious that you've chosen to use another product, yet you still find it necessary to come back here and trash Acronis (and, by implication, those who prefer their products).
Perhaps you're unaware, but computers are complex things, and it's highly unlikely that every Windows XP system has the same array enabled Services. I would only hope to bring to Acronis developers some level of professionalism they clearly have not gotten in the Universities and colleges in their native country.
I've always held that I will return food to the kitchen in a restaurant to which I intend to return. I've never bothered to walk out on a restaurant, then visit another, and gone back to the first to tell the patrons they're stupid for preferring where they are. That's some unique value system you got goin' there.
Can't help you Carol. I checked a couple of my servers and the "Logical Disk Manager Administrative Service" is Manual and not running. I think we figured out a long time ago that there are several Sector 63 issues and mine seemed to have been solved but replacing the files in Article 1514.
Paul I appreciate the feedback on ShadowProtect. It doesn't appear you came back here to bash Acronis. It appears more like you were aware everyone here is looking for an alternative and came up with a recommendation. If I was sitting in a restaruant where I continued to get food poisoning I would greatly appreciate someone poking their head in an telling me that the food at the restaruant across the street is ecoli free and cheaper :) Sorry Carol :)
Just today I was sitting here playing with the Acronis Boot Media (Echo Server) and it didn't recognize the NICs in the newest Intel boards. Then here comes USB 3.0 .... by their own admission Echo doesn't handle USB very well and they have stopped development of the whole Echo series. What left? BR10? I don't think so. I have pretty much had it with Acronis too. I can't keep quoting their product at a 15% markup and then dump 40 hour weeks in to it unbilled because it doesn't work as advertised.
The term "pulled a Symantec" keeps ringing in my head. I have hung on and hung hopeing Acronis would get their act together and finally put out a rock solid solution but I am going to retire in 15 years and don't have that long to wait ...
Dear Jim:
Have you TRIED enabling that service? I replaced the files specified in the latest Article 1514, and was experiencing problems. Now, on the four computers on which I've enabled that service, within 10 seconds of swapping the drive, ATI Workstation Echo (9.7.8398) reports the new drive's label, using the test I specified before (i.e., editing the Task to expose the page that reports all drives & partitions).
I looked at ShadowProtect, too; The GUI appears to clone the look of Acronis' products. And, there's this really odd limitation that a script (what we'd call a Pre-/Post- command file) can only run 5 minutes...and mine often run longer than that to copy the full image to another destination. (I find the five-minute limit an odd choice, and I didn't see any way to change that fixed value; I could live with it, if the value could be changed, but I never found out how. The basic design principle stands: If you're going to impose a limitation that isn't demanded by your environment--e.g., Windows--then always provide the customer to change it and/or disable it.)
Hi Carol. That is interesting about the "Logical Disk Manager Administrative Service". In the very brief reading I did on it I got the impression it is used to essentially configure disks or volumes that have not be previously configured. By enabling do you mean set to Automatic? I started the service but it didn't do anything for me. The external USB drives swap out and go active on all the servers I use it on. We more or less have two different Sector 63 issues. I hope you get a response back from someone who is having your Sector 63 issue. Sounds like you finally hit the bullseye!
I see what you mean about ShadowProtect. I downloaded the trial version and my first thought was "hmm... where have I seen this GUI before? LOL". It looks and runs about identical. I am sure it isn't flawless either. Thanks what I hate about software... unless you have a solid week to play and hit every little nook and cranny you won't know about a bug until Jupiter aligns with Mars and you hit it.
I am not 100% ready to pull the plug on Acronis but I am getting close. The one thing they have never been is 100% open and honest about their short commings. They keep ducking, bobing and weaving and can not fully be trusted. I think in a case like they are in now the best thing they could possibly do is come clean with their customers about this whole BR10 disaster. It is going to be an interesting couple of months to see what they do and how they handle it...
Hi Carol
Yes, ok I do feel bitter; what do you think the chances are of getting the £1000 + of wasted software and days of wasted time back from Acronis? Seriously, If I had a meal as poor, I wouldn't have paid. I don't want others to make the same mistakes (see Jims similie about food poisoning).
I'm curious, after trying Shadowprotect why did you still prefer Acronis?
Quote: ' I would only hope to bring to Acronis developers some level of professionalism they clearly have not gotten in the Universities and colleges in their native country. '
What am I a charity? If Acronis isn't paying / training its staff properly why is this (my) the end user's problem? I do sympathise with the staff in India, as I know the language barrier is a two way thing, and maybe the training is not up to the standard of the West, but really - I just need to get the job done! Acronis made the choice to move support to India to maximise profits. No other reason.
Sorry to sound negative, but it seems that the same old problems keep reoccuring & no one fixes the issues.
Regards
Paul.
PS. I come back to this forum because we still have customers who use Acronis & we can't afford to "buy them out" of problems.I have two with intermittent "error 63s at the moment.
Do I have to seperate you two :)
Paul: Have you checked out the solution I recommended? If your problem is due to unrecognized external USB drives (caused by changing the drive but not rebooting), then check the service. It has fixed the problem on eight of eight installations where I've installed it so far.
Jim: R U tryin' to be HELPFUL again? :-)
As somewhere sometime many moons or so ago I mentioned and Jim has just brought back up (food analogy - hope not), the sector 63 error covers a multitude of sins.
I wish Acronis would add a more extensive and more helpfully verbose set of error messages - though no need to go as far as the cornucopia my compiler can spout forth.
I have been having the same "unable to read from sector 63" for some time now even with the latest build of Echo 8398. My solution was to simply run the 8398 build and do a repair, which seems to fix it for a while, then out of nowhere it would start again. Without a doubt it has something to do with external USB drives and swapping them out without rebooting the server (Server 2003). Tech support is no help, and from what I read in this thread, it a common problem. I even tried an upgrade to version 10 and get the same error with scheduled backup tasks. If tech support cannot fix the problem soon, I'll be forced to switch to another backup program. Acronis Echo has been valuable to me in disaster recovery and has saved me on more than one occasion, but since I can never be sure that the backup will work from day to day, what other choice do I have? Is this problem ever doing to be fixed???
... Is this problem ever doing to be fixed???
Sad to say, probably not. Most of us who used to respect Acronis have already moved to other products, largely because Acronis has abandoned their cutomers and let their quality sink into the dark, along with their technical support.
It's such a shame, 'cause the product had such huge potential. But, like "Ghost" before it, the "Acronis" business owners have taken their customers for granted by delivering @#%&* and then failing to support it with adequate repairs.
Post edited due to violation of forum Terms of Use: "Not post any material or select a username that is abusive, harassing, threatening, sexual explicit, obscene, racially or ethnically offensive or vulgar."
eMail me directly for the information that Acronis doesn't want you to see (caogdin {at} gmail {dot} com
It's a shame when companies are so thin-skinned they don't want open and frank dialog. It's another reason I'll never buy again from Acronis (unless and until their attitudes change).
Hello Carol Anne Ogdin,
I have already sent you personal message regarding it.
Acronis is open for a dialogue and frank discussions of its products and services, however we will not tolerate any racially or ethnically offensive posts on our Forums.
Thanks,
Andrey
I agree with all the above. I must first state that ever since applying the patches in article 1514 I have not seen another Sector 63 error but once again there are several Sector 63 errors. My particular Sector 63 error was "Unable to Read Sector 63 on hard disk X" where X is the external USB hard drive.
What really scares me is that Acronis's initial response was that the Echo series programs weren't really good with external USB products in general. That the problems have been corrected in the BR series. Not from what I have seen... in following the posts the same problems with external USB hard drives seems to exist. Thats is what scares me the most. A carte blanche statement that BR10 has no problems with external USB hard drive... my hiney. One more example of Acronis's "guesswork".
They have learned little and lost a lot...
I can confirm that this is an issue in ABR10 Workstation, as well. My GFS backup scheme has been working flawlessly for months, but in the past few days, I have been arriving in the morning to a nasty error message telling me that Sector 63 on Disk 8 was inaccessible. Hitting retry makes it work fine.
These issues started showing their nasty heads after plugging in a new 32GB Kingston Flash drive, and a couple SanDisk 16GB Flash drives that I have previously had no trouble with. Previously, these drives would only be plugged in as needed, and then be removed. However for the past few days, I have left them plugged in overnight, when the backup is scheduled, and every night the backup is halted until the morning when I can click "retry".
This is on a Windows 7 x64 machine that goes for weeks at a time without instability, and I would hate to have to reboot each time I plugged in USB drives. I really do feel for you folks that have had to make workarounds or reboot for various servers, this is just a workstation and not a server, but I know that the servers I support have users that would not tolerate reboots every day.
I am running the latest build of ABR10, and I have a question, is there an easy way to see which USB drive is holding up the works? It says "Disk 8"... which isn't much help. I presume there is a WMI query I can run to correlate a disk number with a drive letter, but I am not well versed in WMI.
EDIT: I have found which is Disk 8 but going to the "Disk Management"section in ABR10. It is my 32GB drive.... but there is something very odd about it. Acronis shows that it has KINGSTON(J:), at 29.84GB Type Primary, MBR, Filesystem FAT32. But, under that it shows "Unallocated" space.... to the tune of 1.845 TB!! I wasn't aware that I was beta-testing a new 2TB Flash Drive...!!! Maybe a picture will illustrate it better, attached below.
Two ideas for you:
1. To identify "Disk 8", open a command box (e.g., press "Windows+R" or click on a cmd.exe icon), and type "diskmgmt.msc". That will show you the various drives, capacities and formats, all in a graphic form...including the drive identities and labels.
2. Another poster here gave me a hint that seems to be working: Make all plug-in/removable drive partitions "active" (use "diskmgmt.msc", above, right-click the partition (with the color bar at the top of the graphic) and click on "Mark Partition as Active." I've done this will all my external USB disk drives, and it has solved the problem for ATI Workstation Echo and ATI Backup and Restore. (The reason is that ATI, quite inappropriately, scans all drives as its first activity upon loading, whether they're going to be involved in the backup/restore operations or not. Any irrelevant drive that is malformatted can cause late-model ATI products to "hang." Worse, ATI does not properly accept nor handle "messages" that a new drive has been connected--as all other quality products do--so you have to either reboot the system, or stop and restart all the ATI services to force drive re-recognition.)
Two ideas for you:
1. -----got it------
2. (The reason is that ATI, quite inappropriately, scans all drives as its first activity upon loading, whether they're going to be involved in the backup/restore operations or not. Any irrelevant drive that is malformatted can cause late-model ATI products to "hang." Worse, ATI does not properly accept nor handle "messages" that a new drive has been connected--as all other quality products do--so you have to either reboot the system, or stop and restart all the ATI services to force drive re-recognition.)
I see. I guess the reason for scanning all the drives is to detect whether one used as backup has changed - but that doesn't matter, infact that is poor design, because many smart people will be swapping backup drives for offsite storage, etc.
And yet Windows has a great API for detecting the insertion and removal of devices - - does it not? Shame not to use it...
I guess I will set up a script to restart the Acronis scheduler service every day an hour before my backup, but that is a rotten and unnecessary hack.
Do you have an example script that I can can use to restart the Acronis Scheduler just before the scheduled backup? That would be of great help to me!!! Thanks.
This is a VBScript that I use sometimes, it needs work though cause it can't figure out when the service has stopped. Need to code a loop into it to query the status of the service.
'BEGIN VBSCRIPT
Option Explicit
On Error Resume Next
Dim objService, services
set objService = CreateObject("Shell.Application")
services = objService.ServiceStop("YOUR SERVICE HERE",false)
WScript.Sleep 15000 'CHANGE TIMEOUT AS NECESSARY, not sure how to check and see if it has stopped...
services = objService.ServiceStart("YOUR SERVICE HERE",false)
End If
WScript.Quit
'END VBSCRIPT
Just paste the code in notepad and save it with the .vbs extension, then call it from a Windows Scheduled Task.
Thanks for the info Roland. I'll give it a try. I was also looking into PowerShell scripting since it has a simple "Restart-Service" command, but I need to learn more about running powershell scripts from the command line. By the way, do you know the Acronis Scheduler Service name. I tried "schedul2.exe" as Windows Services lists this as the name, but I get a "no service found" error when using the "net stop" command. With the powershell I can use the display name paramater for the Restart-Service command, which is "Acronis Scheduler2 Service", and that does work, but what is the actual service name?
Thanks
Thanks for the info Roland. I'll give it a try. I was also looking into PowerShell scripting since it has a simple "Restart-Service" command, but I need to learn more about running powershell scripts from the command line. By the way, do you know the Acronis Scheduler Service name. I tried "schedul2.exe" as Windows Services lists this as the name, but I get a "no service found" error when using the "net stop" command. With the powershell I can use the display name paramater for the Restart-Service command, which is "Acronis Scheduler2 Service", and that does work, but what is the actual service name?
Thanks
Go to services.msc and double-click the service, it shows the name at the top. For me its AcrSch2Svc
Sorry for being so stupid. I see it now. I was looking at the executable name and not the service name, so no wonder it didn't work for me. Thanks again. I hope that restarting the service each night before the backup will make the sector 63 error go away. If this really is the solution, I can't understand why Acronis can't fix this in a simple patch. And as far as ABR10m I find the new GUI is so different from older versions that I find it hard to navigate. It doesn't even have a "clone schedule" ability like it does in True Image Echo so that setting up multiple schedules has to been done from scratch each time. And by the way I started getting the same error that you did and a reference to "Disk 9", so that my scheduled backups do not go off at night until I manually click "retry" also.
Hopefully "solved", but an ugly solution at best. I created a PowerShell script to simply restart the Acronis Scheduler Service just before it the backup goes off. Here is how to do it:
1) For Server 2003 PowerShell is not part of the installed OS, but you can download it from Microsoft dot com and search for "download powershell" and it will be at the top of the list. Server 2008 has PowerShell included. XP Sp2 or higher, Vista, Win7 supported. Run the installation. What's nice about PowerShell is the ability to restart a service from a single command line without having to wait for the service to completely stop before starting it again.
2) Create a batch file with the following line: powershell.exe restart-service acrsch2svc
To create the batch file, open WordPad and type the line in and save it as "filename.bat" where "filename" is what you want to call it. Make sure it has the ".bat" extension. You can then use the batch file anytime for restarting the Acronis scheduler service. Also, be aware of the folder you save it to, because you'll need to reference it in the next step.
3) Use Windows Scheduled Tasks to execute the batch file before your scheduled backup is to take place.
I know that Acronis has the ability to execute a task before the backup, and I'll experiment if this works too.
I'll post on the forum how it goes.
I know that Acronis has the ability to execute a task before the backup, and I'll experiment if this works too.
Nope, that won't work. The "scan of drives" is performed AFTER Acronis TrueImage and/or Backup & Restore is launched, but BEFORE a scheduled task is invoked...and it is that scheduled task that launches the first ("Pre-...") script.
You have to actually KNOW the scheduled time the Acronis task is to run, then run this script sometime BEFORE that scheduled time.
--Carol Anne
Hi Carol Anne,
I just finished experimenting with the Acronis "pre/post command" option and you are coorect. I guess it can't stop the service while Acronis is actually running. I simply will use the PowerShell script to restart the Acronis service just before the backup runs (my backups go off every day at midnight). Like I said, this is truly "ugly", and shameful (are you listening Acronis Tech Support?) but for me it may by my only hope. I need to be able to trust Acronis to do the backup everytime, everyday without this error popping up randomly. I'll post here as I test it more.
Looks like the PowerShell script works, so that restarting the Acronis scheduler before the scheduled backup is the way to go. So far no 'sector 63" error. I'll do a follow up post to let everyone know if this continues to work.
Looks like I spoke to soon. After about 1 week the error returned - for no real reason that I can explain. I needed to reboot the server to get it to work again. Back to square one!
Thanks Roland. Acronis's statement that all the problems backing up to usb drives has been resloved in BR10 just isn't so. The whole BR10 situation is really, really scary. The Echo series doesn't handle USB drives well and the BR10 series is so riddled with flaws you might as well not back up.
I stopped purchasing and reselling at the Echo Series. The sole fact that you can't overwiite a previous backup with BR10 was a show stopper for me let alone all the other flaws. The overwrite problem was a huge mistake at inception. It took months to get Acronis to acknowledge the issue and here we are a year later and nothing (but promises) has been done about it. It is a sad, sad situation.
Carol Anne and I have been involved in thread after thread looking for workarounds. It is bull. Acronis needs to come out with a product that just works. PERIOD. So far that hasn't happend.
You know something I have never really thought much about and probably should have early in the game... I have never had the Sector 63 Error other then Unable to Write to Sector 63 of hard disk 2 and when that did happen the files from article 1514 seem for have permanently made that error go away. I have a ton of customers all swapping out external USB hard drives on a daily basis and none of them have ever had any other Sector 63 Errors. The one little utility I use on all those servers is USBDLM. None of my external USB drives have MBRs or partitions marked as active. I wonder if that is correcting the problems with disk changing and other Sector 63 errors. Hmmm....
Hi, Jim...
Well, we're now at post #100 in this thread, with nary a solution in sight.
I, too, use USBDLM, but it doesn't solve the problem with Acronis products and external USB drives. However, I have been working recently with trying to get clear about which services Acronis relies on (e.g., "Removable Storage" service; if it is running or not MAY be a contributor to the problem.
I've got one system, using ATI Workstation Echo Build 8398 that has BOTH snapman.sys and snmn380.sys installed, and if you install EITHER ONE, it will refuse to boot past the "Windows XP (loading)" screen. Now, THAT's weird.
So, 100 posts (and over 5-1/2 months) and we've never gotten a solution. Is there ANYBODY that makes a reliable, convenient image backup oroduct I can use instead?